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In recent years, numerous techniques were developed to automatically prove termination of different kinds of probabilistic programs. However, there are only few automated methods to disprove their termination. In this paper, we present the…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2026-05-29 Jan-Christoph Kassing , Henri Nagel , Alexander Schlecht , Jürgen Giesl

Termination is one of the basic liveness properties, and we study the termination problem for probabilistic programs with real-valued variables. Previous works focused on the qualitative problem that asks whether an input program terminates…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2016-11-17 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Petr Novotný , Đorđe Žikelić

Since many real-world problems arising in the fields of compiler optimisation, automated software engineering, formal proof systems, and so forth are equivalent to the Halting Problem--the most notorious undecidable problem--there is a…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2007-07-13 Cristian S. Calude , Michael A. Stay

We propose an automated method for proving termination of $\pi$-calculus processes, based on a reduction to termination of sequential programs: we translate a $\pi$-calculus process to a sequential program, so that the termination of the…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2021-09-02 Tsubasa Shoshi , Takuma Ishikawa , Naoki Kobayashi , Ken Sakayori , Ryosuke Sato , Takeshi Tsukada

We consider the problem of expected cost analysis over nondeterministic probabilistic programs, which aims at automated methods for analyzing the resource-usage of such programs. Previous approaches for this problem could only handle…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2019-03-26 Peixin Wang , Hongfei Fu , Amir Kafshdar Goharshady , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Xudong Qin , Wenjun Shi

We study the termination problem for probabilistic term rewrite systems. We prove that the interpretation method is sound and complete for a strengthening of positive almost sure termination, when abstract reduction systems and term rewrite…

Symbolic Computation · Computer Science 2018-02-28 Martin Avanzini , Ugo Dal Lago , Akihisa Yamada

What is computable with limited resources? How can we verify the correctness of computations? How to measure computational power with precision? Despite the immense scientific and engineering progress in computing, we still have only…

Other Computer Science · Computer Science 2016-10-20 Attila Egri-Nagy

In this paper, we consider termination of probabilistic programs with real-valued variables. The questions concerned are: 1. qualitative ones that ask (i) whether the program terminates with probability 1 (almost-sure termination) and (ii)…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2015-10-30 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Hongfei Fu , Petr Novotny , Rouzbeh Hasheminezhad

Probabilistic programs encode stochastic models as ordinary-looking programs with primitives for sampling numbers from predefined distributions and conditioning. Their applications include, among many others, machine learning and modeling…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2025-12-16 Dominik Geißler , Tobias Winkler

We show that a subclass of infinite-state probabilistic programs that can be modeled by probabilistic one-counter automata (pOC) admits an efficient quantitative analysis. In particular, we show that the expected termination time can be…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2011-02-15 Tomas Brazdil , Stefan Kiefer , Antonin Kucera

Programs that combine I/O and countable probabilistic choice, modulo either bisimilarity or trace equivalence, can be seen as describing a probabilistic strategy. For well-founded programs, we might expect to axiomatize bisimilarity via a…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-08-22 Nathan Bowler , Sergey Goncharov , Paul Blain Levy

In the last two decades, there has been much progress on model checking of both probabilistic systems and higher-order programs. In spite of the emergence of higher-order probabilistic programming languages, not much has been done to…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2023-06-22 Naoki Kobayashi , Ugo Dal Lago , Charles Grellois

Probabilistic Logic Programming is an effective formalism for encoding problems characterized by uncertainty. Some of these problems may require the optimization of probability values subject to constraints among probability distributions…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2023-06-22 Damiano Azzolini , Fabrizio Riguzzi

This paper presents a new static analysis for deriving upper bounds on the expected resource consumption of probabilistic programs. The analysis is fully automatic and derives symbolic bounds that are multivariate polynomials of the inputs.…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2017-11-27 Van Chan Ngo , Quentin Carbonneaux , Jan Hoffmann

In this paper, we introduce a method for approximating the solution to inference and optimization tasks in uncertain and deterministic reasoning. Such tasks are in general intractable for exact algorithms because of the large number of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2012-12-12 David Ephraim Larkin

We consider the almost-sure (a.s.) termination problem for probabilistic programs, which are a stochastic extension of classical imperative programs. Lexicographic ranking functions provide a sound and practical approach for termination of…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2021-08-05 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Ehsan Kafshdar Goharshady , Petr Novotný , Jiří Zárevúcky , Đorđe Žikelić

We describe an approximate rational arithmetic with round-off errors (both absolute and relative) controlled by the user. The rounding procedure is based on the continued fraction expansion of real numbers. Results of computer experiments…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2025-10-20 Grigori Litvinov , Anatoli Rodionov , Andrei Chourkin

The paper addresses the problem of computing maximal expected time to termination of probabilistic timed automata (PTA) models, under the condition that the system will, eventually, terminate. This problem can exhibit high computational…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2018-03-23 Omar Al-Bataineh , Michael Fisher , David Rosenblum

We present a heuristic framework for attacking the undecidable termination problem of logic programs, as an alternative to current termination/non-termination proof approaches. We introduce an idea of termination prediction, which predicts…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2009-05-14 Yi-Dong Shen , Danny De Schreye , Dean Voets

In this paper we consider a fragment of the first-order theory of the real numbers that includes systems of equations of continuous functions in bounded domains, and for which all functions are computable in the sense that it is possible to…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2016-08-15 Peter Franek , Stefan Ratschan , Piotr Zgliczynski